FRENCH AID PLANE ARRIVES IN COLOMBIA TO HELP HOSTAGE:

FRENCH AID PLANE ARRIVES IN COLOMBIA TO HELP HOSTAGE: PRESIDENTIAL SOURCE
http://www.ttc.org/200804031116.m33bgm828511.htm
Received Thursday, 3 April 2008 11:16:00 GMT

PARIS, April 3, 2008 (AFP) - A French aid mission to help a gravely ill French-Colombian hostage arrived Thursday in Colombia but still had no guarantee her rebel captors will grant access to her, a presidential source here said.

"We have had no reply from the FARC," the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia who have held the former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt for six years in the Amazonian jungle, the source said.

The source did not say where exactly the Falcon 50 jet carrying the team had landed in its bid to help Betancourt, who has become a cause celebre in France due to high-profile campaigning by her family and friends here.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's government has agreed to suspend military operations against the FARC to allow the deployment of the mission, but only if the French team informs it exactly where it is headed.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy pleaded Tuesday with FARC leader Manuel Marulanda to release Betancourt, saying he feared that she would die in the FARC camp somewhere in Guaviare state, 400 kilometres (250 miles) south of Bogota.

The 46-year-old is believed to be suffering from hepatitis B and leishmania, a skin disease caused by insect bites. Videos seized from the rebels in November showed her looking gaunt and frail.

According to Colombian reports and witness accounts, she has been refusing food and medical care from the FARC from the past five weeks.

She was captured in February 2002 while campaigning for the Colombian presidency and is now among 39 high-profile hostages, including three US defence contractors, the FARC wants exchanged for 500 rebels held in prison.

The Marxist guerrilla movement, which finances itself partly through the illegal drug trade, is believed to be holding more than 700 people hostage in the jungles of the Latin American state.

The FARC, which has been fighting the Colombian government for more than 40 years and controls huge swathes of the country, has in recent months turned down several requests for medical missions to visit sick hostages.

In the town of San Jose, in Colombia's Amazon jungle, authorities said Wednesday they were ready to receive the French medical mission but had had no confirmation from Paris that it was heading there.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has said it was ready if needed to act as a neutral intermediary in any hostage handover, as it has done in the past.

Colombian former lawmaker Luis Eladio, who last saw Betancourt three weeks before he was released by the FARC on February 27, said Sunday she was concerned about the media attention she is drawing because it increases her value in the eyes of her captors.

The heightened importance the world media is giving her, Eladio told a magazine, "for obvious reasons, is making her (possible) release more . . . ?

By sloopskipper on Apr 3, 2008, 04:45 in Politics & the war.

sloopskipper says on Apr 3, 2008, 04:48:

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